Internet Explorer 6 - what are the traps and tips?

[Tea]

OK, seeing az Tannin makez me use Internet Explorer and hogs Opera and Moz to himself, and seeing as my IE 5 suddenly started crashing for no reason that I'm aware of, I decided to try IE 6 instead. So far, it seems to be working just fine. I haven't actually noticed anything different yet.

Was this really dumb?

What do I need to know? I'm running Windows 2000 SP3. I already deleted Outbreak Express - a ridiculously complicated and arcane process! - and the Windows Scripting Host. Anything else I need to do?

(Note: reduced "z" count in this pozt: one of the main men to answer this sort of question is Mercutio, zo I have to be nice to him. For today, anyway.)

 

[Howell]

I would at least turn IE security up (maybe to high) and manually add cookies for sites you want to recieve cookies from.

 

[Pradeep]

Hit Windows Update and make sure you have all the patches.

 

[Tea]

Thanks guyz. I'll do those two things.

My first impressions are that it's not very different but two things bug me:

1: The page-load delay bugz me. I don't like the way it just sits there and doesn't give you any indication that you really have clicked on a link (bar the clicking sound the same as IE 5 had), and then suddenly flips you to the new page just when you've decided it isn't working. What was wrong with the hourglass? It was much easier to tell what was going on with IE 5.

2: The vertical scroll bar looks funny. I guess I'll get used to it.

 

[Pradeep]

Click on the View menu, and select Status Bar. That will give you the little bar showing loading progress.

 

[Tea]

Already got that. Pradeep. I'm just used to not having to look at it. Usually I look up to the top right corner for the visual cues in Opera or Moz. Or, for that matter in the old ones I cut my teeth on - Web Explorer, Netscape 2.2 & 4.x. In IE 5 it was always obvious. Now I have to get used to doing it a different way.

(I better gop to bed. I'm starting to zound like Tannin.)

 

[Mercutio]

Be sure to visist xupiter.com and say yes to everything it asks to do!





Yes, that was a joke. Although it's a really good thing to do to someone you don't like.

 

[EdwardK]

Be sure to visist xupiter.com and say yes to everything it asks to do!





Yes, that was a joke. Although it's a really good thing to do to someone you don't like.

Hey Merc,

Thats not a nice thing to do! :lol:
That Xupiter thing is so annonying. I once visited a web site which acts as a portal for Xupiter and accidentally accepted the Xupiter cookie (yeah right, I can hear Merc saying now. :wink: ) and the Xupiter parasite took over my default homepage and search engine in IE. Damn that Xupiter! A pox on all those who licenses Xupiter! :evil: After this nasty episode, I am always cautious and always use an anti-spyware program such as Ad-Aware.

Cheers,
Edward

 

[Howell]

Already got that. Pradeep. I'm just used to not having to look at it. Usually I look up to the top right corner for the visual cues in Opera or Moz. Or, for that matter in the old ones I cut my teeth on - Web Explorer, Netscape 2.2 & 4.x. In IE 5 it was always obvious. Now I have to get used to doing it a different way.

(I better gop to bed. I'm starting to zound like Tannin.)

Does the IE globe not spin for you? Usually pages pop up within a couple seconds of clicking a link for me.

 

[Mercutio]

... and in an example of the sheer irony of life, I picked up a job today to "fix" the PCs of a "Marketing Company" (The kind with a lot of telephones that seems to be most interested in your business around dinner time).

Turns out that through the fascinations of their various loser employees, most of their on-site PCs were getting between four and eleven pop-ups for every page they hit. Their poor little DSL line couldn't take it.

I *almost* walked out, but then I realized that someone else would just take their money, so I sat down to work and, through the magic of msconfig and adaware 6, banished their gator, bonzi buddy, new.net, xupiter, hotbar, Movie Network (*may be worse than Xupiter), JavaRun and lop.com toolbar.

I ran adaware on 21 PCs today. In one case I found more than 3,500 objects adaware objected to. I gave a long, stern lecture to my client after I was done, but it seems to me that most of his problems could've been avoided pretty easily just be either not using IE or by setting to the highest level.

 

[Pradeep]

Already got that. Pradeep. I'm just used to not having to look at it. Usually I look up to the top right corner for the visual cues in Opera or Moz. Or, for that matter in the old ones I cut my teeth on - Web Explorer, Netscape 2.2 & 4.x. In IE 5 it was always obvious. Now I have to get used to doing it a different way.

(I better gop to bed. I'm starting to zound like Tannin.)

'

Don't you have cable you hairy bast####. You shouldn't be waiting more than millisecond for any page anyways!

 

[CityK]

In one case I found more than 3,500 objects adaware objected to.

I spent several hours this morning cleaning up a relative's laptop (XP Home based) - removing built up file crud, killing unnecessary services, startups, and configuring etc etc....They had handed it to me saying that its getting rather sluggish. Turns out there were only 103,000 files occupying 1.3GB of diskspace in their Temporary Internet folder. I have never seen Winexplorer get so bogged down... Surprisingly, after the purge, running Adaware only came up with 3 offending registry entries and nothing else. I shudder how many cookies and crap it would have choked on had I ran it first before purging the IE junk.

CK

 

[e_dawg]

Tips?

- Install the CrazyBrowser shell for IE (http://crazybrowser.com) to block pop-ups and have tabbed browsing -- two important features that you can get with Moz and Opera that you would otherwise have to do without using straight IE6. It's pretty compact, too... maybe 700 KB?

- Learn to use the Groups feature or Load Last Open Sites Upon Startup so you can do something for a minute while everything loads

- Rearrange and resize all the toolbars to free-up more browser space

- CityK reminds me... set your Temp Internet Files to cache 12-16 MB of files

- Flash-ectomy, if you haven't already done that

 

[Tannin]

Tea seems to be having a little difficulty accessing the net today guys.

Mercutio, are you sure that Xupiter.com was the right answer for her? She's up in a tree at the moment and won't come down for anything - not bananas, not chocolate, not even gin. I think something must have gone a little bit wrong.

I'm wondering if it would be easier to install Pheonix for her instead. We haven't tried that one yet. It coexists with Mozilla OK? Or else I'll have to try to un-xupiter her IE 6 and folloe E_Dawg's advice.

 

[timwhit]

I like Crazy Browser as well, can't hurt to give it a try.

 

[GMac]

Thanks for the tip chaps - Crazy Browser is much better than IE6, and has duly taken over as my second browser, alongside Mozilla 1.2. The tabs are particularly nice, and I like the built-in pop up stopper :lol: - an absolute godsend :beer:

GM

 

[Howell]

Sigh. Is there any way to recover middle-button click-scrolling with crazy browser or am I gonna have ta whack it.

 

[e_dawg]

Yes, Howell, but you have to do 3 things:

1. Tools > Advanced Options > FullScreen:
- deselect "Middle mouse button toggles full-screen mode"

2. Tools > Advanced Options > Browser Tabs:
- deselect "Close tabs on Middle mouse button click"

3. Tools > Advanced Options > Browser Tabs > New Tabs:
- deselect "Middle mouse button click on links"

Voila. Middle mouse button now activates scrolling function

 

[e_dawg]

D'oh! In all 3 steps above, it should read Options, not Tools

 

[James]

I prefer MyIE2 to CrazyBrowser (if nothing else, the name is much better!) - you can find it here.

 

[e_dawg]

Hey, good call, James! myIE2 looks very promising... perhaps even better than CrazyBrowser. It doesn't have the on-tab DL progress indicator that Tannin requires, but it does have useful things that CrazyBrowser doesn't have like mouse gestures and URL alias creation -- two excellent features previously unique to Opera.

Perhaps a better site to dowload it from is:

http://www.webattack.com/download/dlmyiebrowser.shtml

The link you provided is extremely slow over here in N.America.

 

[Mercutio]

Moz has gestures. You can get them from mozdev.org. Not that I can see why anyone would want them.

 

[timwhit]

What exactly are gestures?

 

[e_dawg]

Mouse gestures means you can use your mouse for navigational control by holding down right-click and moving the mouse (gesturing) left to go back, right to go forward, down to open a new window, etc. I know some people have 5-button mice that can accomplish that, but I don't and appreciate the mouse gestures so I don't have to hunt for the back, forward, and new window icons, or even right-click and select back or forward from the drop-down menu. I can right-click anywhere and gesture without any concentration or precision.

 

[Mercutio]

Of course, keyboard shortcuts are also a good choice. Tried gestures. Didn't like them. Went back to ALT-leftarrow.

 

[timwhit]

Of course, keyboard shortcuts are also a good choice. Tried gestures. Didn't like them. Went back to ALT-leftarrow.

That's what I usually do. Or I just click the back button.

 

[Howell]

Of course, keyboard shortcuts are also a good choice. Tried gestures. Didn't like them. Went back to ALT-leftarrow.

TY TY TY. I've been using backspace and didn't have a shortcut for forward.